76 meeting repeating simple generalities ("It is not a question of Maneka but of the nation, " "We have gathered here not to break a party but to build a nation") and making vague charges ("Leaders are spreading communal tensions, " "Weaker sections of society are being hurt," "Anti-social elements are abroad," "Corruption is rooted in the system"). The newspapers used the same phrase- "schoolgirlish"- to dismiss her speeches which they had used to dismiss Mrs Gandhi's when she was starting her political career. One day, the newspapers reported that Mrs. Gandhi would be going to the ashram of a holy man (the late Vinoba Bhave) to seek his blessing. On the same day, they reported that Maneka would be going to the same holy man. One day, the youth wing of Congress Indira announced that it would not invi te Maneka to any of the functions it was organizing to mark the second anniversary of Sanjay's death. Another day, Maneka and her supporters an- nounced that they would mark that anniversary by calling rallies of wid- ows and distributing clothes to them. (On the anniversary itself, first Man- eka went with Varun to Sanjay's cre- mation ground, and then, an hour later, Mrs. Gandhi went there with Rajiv and Sonia and their children.) Maneka's supporters referred to her as "Madam," just as Mrs. Gandhi's supporters referred to her as "Mad- am" -both factions saying things like "V\Thatever Madam decides, we will abide by it." One Maneka support- er said, "Anybody who is not loyal to Sanjay and his widow cannot be loy- al to Rajiv. Anyway, Rajiv is too old. He is thirty-nine. What the country needs is a youth leader , somebody like Madam." On August 25th, at a press confer- ence, Maneka declared that a lot of members of Congress Indira were be- coming dissatisfied with "the non- functioning of the government"-it was a phrase that Mrs. GandhI had used against the Janata government- and that therefore the apolitical Sanjay Forum had to be changed into a politi- cal party. "All power is centralized in one house in a group of three or four people," she said. Besides, she con- tended, workers for the Forum were being harassed, and the only way left was to fight this injustice politically. The TiJnes of India, a national daily, noted in an editorial: So finalh Mrs l'vlaneka Gandhi has put her cards on tht' table. . .. This "hould put an t'nd to the sedulously propagated myth that she ha had no political ambitions, that, apart from her lovt' for animals, her main desire has been to propagate tht' ideals of her late husband. and that her clash with 1\;1rs Indira Gandhi leading to her exit from the Prime Minister's houst' fell in the usual mother-in-Iaw-daughter- in-law category. Indeed, her statement on [August 25th] establishes beyond reason- able doubt that the formdtion of th [San]ay Five-Point Forum] earlier this year was a deliberate political act, that Maneka's decision to address its first con- vention in Lucknow on March 28 amount- ed to raising the banner of revolt against Mrs. Gandhi. . . . Maneka has also dropped the pretence that she has no quarrel \\lith Mrs. Gandhi's leader hip of the government and the Con- gress [Indira]. In fact, she has made it clear that the Prime Minister is to be the princi- pal target of her political activities. . . . The fight is thus in tht' open, which is as well. A political battle, even if it is the result of nothing grander or nobler than a clash of ambitions or personalities, should be fought d a political battle. The battle was deemed to be fought over nothing less than the fate of a nation that was, in the words of the national biweekly I ndza Today, "a democratic monarchy," and, it de- clared, at stake was the ancestral property-India-with the heir in dispute. This March, Maneka formally named her party Rashtriya San jay Manch (National Sanjay Organiza- tion), claiming that by now it had established local branches in most states, with a total membership of eight hundred thousand, and stating that she would take on Rajiv in Amethi in the next general elections. Few political observers, though, ever gave Maneka or her emerging party much of a chance, and at the outset it got caught in the crossfire between opposition leaders, who had no use for Sanjay, and Sanjay enthusiasts in Con- gress Indira, who preferred Mrs. Gandhi and the substance of power to Maneka and the remote possibility of power. But then, in September, au- . '. '" \t. ..' . .. ... . ..... ' .".. , .. ".-.!" -: .' ...:.:....! :...... . :'t " , " 1 ' _.;;' "'., :: .. .. .' .... L' . v " \ .,' "- .. t:. ' . "f,_.. .....-- thorities arrested three of Maneka's closest supporters, including Dumpy, on a charge of murdering a servant. The case was immediately thrown out by the court, and the whole episode, which received much attention in the press, left the impression that Mrs. Gandhi's supporters were bent on de- stroying Maneka's fledgling organiza- tion by any available means-just as Maneka said. The press intensified its attacks on Mrs. Gandhi: on her ((ca- bal;" on her "monolithic, intolerant party;" on her "rule of the states throug h satraps," chosen more for their loyalty to her than for their pop- ularity in the states; on her "personal- ized dictatorship." It was pointed out that Mrs. Gandhi was sixty-five, and that Rajiv and the Rajiv men were failing to take hold anywhere. Mrs. Gandhi's supporters continued to dis- miss Maneka and the public criticism as a tempest in a teapot. They took comfort in President Reagan's view of Nehru and his descendants. In propos- ing a toast to Mrs. Gandhi at the White House during her visit to the United States in July, he had said, "The contributions which your family has made to India most closely paral- lel in our history the Adams family. They came from Massachusetts, not Kashmir. . . . By coincidence they were often referred to as Boston Brah- mins. And theirs, too, was a tradition of scholarship, sacrifice, and public service. Successive generations of Adamses contributed to our nation- al development, first by struggling for independence and articulating our national ideals, then through years of selfless effort toward their attain- ment So you, Madam Prime Minister, your father, and each of your sons have served India." E ARLY in December, Mrs. Gandhi surprised everyone by calling elections in January for the legisla- tures of the adjoining southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka As a rule, general elections are held every five years, but if at any time the party in power in a state-or in the country -either is forced out of office or vol- untarily resigns, and no one else can form a government, special elections may be called. Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka were already under Con- gress Indira rule, but Mrs. Gandhi got the governments there to resign, so that they might return with greater strength. The area had been solidly in Mrs. Gandhi's and her father's camp SInce Independence, in 1947; and in